Canadian Government Executive - Volume 26 - Issue 02

March/April 2020 // Canadian Government Executive / 25 shares sobering imagery in his book Noise: our minds are like spinning beach balls. By that, he means the spinning icon on a computer that indicates the processor is running, but not much is happening. Originally he was going to call his book In One Ear and Out the Other . That relates to a notion he calls the “Elusive 600”: research showing our brain processes about 700 words per minute but the average person speaks or reads 150 words per minute. So your brain over-processes as it looks for something to fill that 600-word gap. We might think about how vital this person’s comments are and listen intently. Or we might start to think about plans for lunch. We might tune out. He says the Elusive 600 can be a blessing or a curse. “It’s as if you are having an ongoing conversation with your brain. When it goes unchecked, the Elusive 600 is like letting a squirrel free in your attic. It runs around, wreaking havoc. You have to capture and control it,” he writes. That requires awareness management – mindfulness. He urges you to keep things simple: understand what is essential and fo- cus on that. Don’t fear missing out. He urges you to take a silent retreat, allowing some peace and serenity to define what matters for you. (And book the retreat time now, he says, rather than put- ting it off.) Try more consistently to write things down as they come up – tasks, ideas, and other people’s comments – so they are captured rather than roaming around in your brain and in a position to be evaluated for importance. Make your friends, fam- ily and colleagues aware of your intention to simplify and focus on the essential – as he put it, “make a private, then a public pact.” Learn to listen better. Journalists, therapists and interrogators are professional listeners. They aren’t just listening to someone, he points out, but listening for something. “The distinction is im- portant because they listen with pointed purpose and deep inter- est,” he observes. Eyal also shares many practical tips after making his point on values. They include: • Place a card on your computer monitor or door to indicate when you don’t want to be distracted, explaining the reasons to col- leagues. But as with McCormack, he suggests you talk with col- leagues first about this, explaining your purpose and suggesting they may want to do the same. His wife bought a headband on Amazon that she calls her “concentration crown” that lights up with LEDs, signalling “please don’t interrupt.” Perhaps too outré for a government office – or maybe a trendsetter. web http://canadiangovernmentexecutive.ca/author/harveys/ • Checking email is not a problem. It’s the compulsive re-check - ing. Curb that. • Only touch an email twice. The first time you open one, tag it by when it needs to be responded to – “today” or “this week.” Only respond immediately to super-urgent messages. • Slow down the email cycle by delaying your message’s delivery. • Work to change meeting culture so they aren’t held to help col - leagues avoid solving a problem for themselves. Insist that any call for a meeting include a proposed action, with the meeting intended to gain consensus. • Rearrange your smartphone apps to follow the prescription from Tony Stubblebine, editor of Better Humans: first you should see primary work tools, then aspirations like meditation apps or books to read, and finally the slot machine apps you get lost in like email and Facebook. Better yet, eliminate many of the latter and only use them in scheduled sessions on your desktop. Distractions and noise aren’t going away. You won’t defeat them, but the ideas in these books will help defend yourself better. H arvey S chachter is a writer, specializing in management and business issues. He writes three weekly columns for the Globe and Mail and The Leader’s Bookshelf column for Canadian Government Executive, and a regular column and features for Kingston Life magazine. Harvey was editor of the 2004 book Memos to the Prime Minister: What Canada Can Be in the 21st Century. He was the ghostwriter on The Three Pillars of Pub- lic Management by Ole Ingstrup and Paul Crookall, and editor of Getting Clients, Keeping Clients by Dan Richards. The Leader’s Bookshelf Don’t fear missing out. McCormack urges you to take a silent retreat, allowing some peace and serenity to define what matters for you. (And book the retreat time now, he says, rather than putting it off.) Try more consistently to write things down as they come up – tasks, ideas, and other people’s comments – so they are captured rather than roaming around in your brain and in a position to be evaluated for importance.